Improving work-life balance

Workers in Alabama and throughout the United States face the daily challenge of balancing the demands of work with the needs of their families, whether that be taking care of a sick parent, caring for young children or even, for many workers, both.

More flexible work schedules would help workers achieve a better family-work balance. Allowing hourly employees, who work overtime, to choose between receiving overtime pay for hours worked and banking the overtime as comp time to use in the future would provide workers with greater flexibility. Such a policy seems fair and reasonable, right? Well, there’s a problem.

Federal law, enacted in the late 1930s, actually prevents private-sector employers from even offering their hourly employees that family-friendly option. Washington, however, has given a select group of hourly workers a pass. In the 1980s, Congress permitted state and local governments the ability to offer their employees the choice to earn comp time instead of overtime.

So if you’re an hourly, private-sector employee and your neighbors are hourly, government employees, they may enjoy a family-friendly benefit that the federal government actually prevents your employer from offering you.

Laws affecting working families should be based on our modern needs, not on those of the 1938 workforce. It is time to level the playing field between government workers and their private-sector counterparts. Policymakers have an opportunity to reform this antiquated labor law by providing private-sector employers the option to offer their employees a flexible-schedule benefit, the same benefit many government employees enjoy now.

Rep. Martha Roby, R-Ala., introduced legislation earlier this year that would provide working families and their employers with that option. The Working Families Flexibility Act would amend the nearly 80-year-old law that penalizes private-sector workers and continues to lock them in a rigid, uncompromising system. Roby’s bill would ensure that all workers who earn an hourly wage – 75.9 million Americans, including approximately 1.1 million Alabamians – could benefit from their employer being able to offer them a choice between being paid overtime and earning comp time.

For instance, Roby’s proposal would empower employers to offer their workers, who are paid hourly wages or are nonexempt salaried employees, the option of choosing to receive traditional overtime pay or to bank one and a half hours of comp time for every hour of overtime they work. Further, if an employee does not use all of her comp time, she would be paid for the balance.

Under the Working Families Flexibility Act, working Alabamians would enjoy flexibility they don’t have now.

A husband and wife in Dothan could use comp time – up to 320 paid hours – to complement their other paid time off so they may stay home with their newborn.

A single mother in Montgomery would have the option to bank her overtime work as comp time so that she can spend up to an extra 20 days a year with her children.

A working daughter in Andalusia could choose to bank comp time so that she can better care for her ailing mother.

Workers and their employers would benefit from this initiative by giving Alabama’s working families choices about how to satisfy the responsibilities of their jobs while providing for the unique needs of their home life. Rep. Roby’s legislation is a step in the right direction and would provide workers with the necessary flexibility to meet the individual needs of their families.

Workers know their own circumstances better than the government does, and they should be allowed to make choices that best meet their families’ needs. Ultimately, Washington should trust employers and working families in Alabama and throughout America. Policymakers should enact Rep. Roby’s Working Families Flexibility Act and provide all hourly workers the opportunity to have the flexibility they need and deserve.

Travis Hall is the communications director at the Conservative Reform Network.